MORE ON MOTHERHOOD/CITIZENSHIP: I posted this in the comments section at Asymmetrical Information, when a reader pointed out that my description of the Yale conference was tentative and vague: Jason–The description I linked is actually a description of two different panels, of which I only saw the second. Prof. Balkin doesn’t describe every speaker, nor does he describe every argument made by each speaker–his post is more, “Here’s some of the interesting stuff that happened at my conference.” And I think he and I were interested in different things.

As for me, I tried to be fairly tentative in part b/c what the “motherhood vs. citizenship” speakers (one was Prof. Robin West of Georgetown, the other, I think, was Prof. Reva Siegel [sp?] of Yale) were saying seemed SO out there that I didn’t want to make really hard-and-fast claims in case I had somehow missed a step. However, I was listening closely and taking notes.

I do think I’ve given the mis-impression that Profs. West and Siegel thought women shouldn’t be mothers, or something–West says (this is from my notes), “I fully agree that motherhood as we currently socially construct it is incompatible with citizenship…” (and the “motherhood vs. citizenship” language was used fairly casually at other points in the conference), but I think she also believes it may be possible to overcome that incompatibility by having more “community parenting” (eh) and more government-funded child support (plus legal abortion, presumably). Several of the speakers became kind of fuzzy about whether abortion would still be Constitutionally required in a socialist/communal-parenting state; I assume that’s because we’re, uh, not gonna see that state any time soon.

Hope that clarified things–

Eve